The Virginian

Thursday, November 30, 2017

Almost all of the fields where this happened are highly oligarchic and controlled by the left. The males who rose to power in it, mostly by mouthing feminist platitudes, were, therefore, left with unchecked power over the careers of a lot of women.

I come from a similar field, and I’m going to tell you I have lots of sympathy for those women. As my friend Dave Freer put it recently, “we never gave sexual favors, but to be honest, we were never asked sexual favors.” Which… maybe he wasn’t. I was, and I knew when I was turning the “kind offer” down, I was turning down the advance of my career as well. But I was married and monogamous (still am) and that’s far more important than a career.

...

So I’m not holding up my nose at victims, and I’m not covered in righteousness and glory.

When you’re in a field where you have to pass the scrutiny of a tiny, select number of gatekeepers – when you know that the number of slots available for artistic work to even reach the public is much smaller than the number of people jostling for a slot — you’re going to do whatever it takes to get one of those slots. Sure. I get that.

...

And the sexual extortion in Hollywood, in news, in various kinds of showbiz happened because women gave in to it, cowered to it, and even protected the offenders. Because they wanted a career.

So… we’ve established what they are, they just don’t like the price they paid, and are trying to revoke the deal retroactively.

Let’s make no mistake here: yeah, sure, the abusers were enabled by the media. They were enabled by an establishment that protected men acting like moronic glands on legs if they spouted the right opinions. They were protected by money, power, and prestige.

And the women gave in to them because they had power, money, prestige. Because the women wanted a career, advancement. Money.

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For men who persist or who start out with groping, where I come from in another time and place, there was the slap, or for the really slow of learning ones, the punch.

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Every woman who didn’t react to these untoward, unacceptable advances in one of these ways fed the system that abused other women. Most of these men were actually convinced they were irresistible and the women were willing. Why would they not be? That was their experience.

And this is not acceptable.

If women are going to be adult human beings, in the workplace we need to stand on two legs and demand to be treated like adult human beings. We need to, yes, refuse tainted advancement based on putting out. We need to behave as professionals.

...

No one can victimize you unless you allow it. And allowing yourself to be victimized for power and money is not victimization, it’s greed and ambition.

The continuous denunciation carnival grows tiresome, much as we on the right are watching your cannibal feast with growing fascination.

...

You wanted into the workplace, you have it. Now hold the line. Refuse to sell your body for a career.

All these victims coming out and crying about long-past sins? These monsters you’re now denouncing? Ladies, you created them.

You can choose to stop this now and turn it around. Or you can go shambling further into insanity and restriction of women's options.

Did you know that those exquisite White House Christmas decorations First Lady Melania Trump proudly unveiled yesterday are "spooky," "spine-chilling," and "nightmarish" — like scenes from Mordor, Narnia, or The Shining?

It took most of the day yesterday, but by nightfall, the Trump-hating media was able to settle on an unfavorable narrative with which to belittle the newly unveiled decor.

Dirty Rock - Matt Lauer,

It turns out that Leandra English is a recent hire at the CFPB, parachuting in after a stint as a political appointee at the Office of Personnel Management and getting the job at CFPB shortly after President Trump was elected.

A top Republican demanded answers Wednesday on how Leandra English, the woman Democrats are pushing to be acting director of the government’s top consumer advocacy agency, managed to “burrow” into her job and outlast the Obama administration.

Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Ms. English held a political job at the Office of Personnel Management but managed to convert herself to a career civil service position early this year at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The process is called “burrowing,” and it is generally frowned upon, though it does happen somewhat regularly.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's brother Anthony Rodham are facing a $17 million fraud lawsuit from Chinese investors in Greentech Automotive, an electric car company that appears to be struggling to survive.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

We’ve learned so much about what women face in the last few weeks, and you liberal men should take this as an opportunity to change – specifically, out of your flapping bathrobes and into some Dockers. Groping, flashing, molesting shrubs – believe it or not, some women consider these things to be wrong. Crazy? Sure, but for now it’s no more monkey business as usual. As a noted Democrat, you need to maintain your political viability, and you can exploit the respect and concern for women you’ve always pretended to have to help you dodge responsibility for whatever you’ve already done!

Hey, nobody gets into liberal politics because they actually believe this stuff! Being a Democrat leader has always been a traditional path to making special new friends for guys who can’t cut it on looks and personality. Face it – no one ever said, “You know who’s hot? Al Franken. I bet he can bench his body weight.” If Harvey Weinstein had managed a Safeway, America’s starlets and ferns would be substantially less traumatized.

Having needs is nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve taken on an awesome responsibility being a Democrat leader – you’re constantly struggling to hold up the burden imposed upon you by the support and acclaim of the D.C. establishment and the media. You have a right to extracurricular activities; why, liberal women will tell you themselves that the mere fact that you are quite willing to kill babies by the millions entitles you to all sorts of fringe benefits!

But hey, there are a lot of uptight people out there whose bourgeois notions of “right” and “wrong” really don’t account for the unique pressures and special requirements you face as a liberal icon lookin’ for some lovin’. So, you need to take precautions to ensure that people don’t get the right idea about what you are doing.

Wrong idea. I mean, wrong idea.

First, you’ll want to exclusively seek out liberal women. Don’t make Bill Clinton’s mistake and target women who aren’t reliable progressives. Pinko gals generally know how to play ball and won’t start some sort of fuss that will end up derailing your really important work towards the Democrat Party’s ultimate goal of turning America into Venezuela II: The Starvening.

And be considerate! Don’t just tell her, “You’d better put some ice on that.” Show her you care. Go and get her some ice yourself – see, it’s the little things that make the difference between silent suffering and embarrassing revelations.

Now, there may to be some ungrateful ladies who make some allegations about you for whatever reason, most likely their participation in the vast right wing conspiracy. This puts you in a tough place because you have to balance the liberal principle of believing the victim with the liberal principle of liberals not being held accountable for the terrible things they do.

Just take a deep breath – it’s going to be okay, because you’re a Democrat. The media and Hollywood are going nuts, but if you’re a Democrat in Congress, you’re good. Hell, Teddy Kennedy drowned a chick and they pretty much gave him a medal. You didn’t drown a chick, did you? If you did, maybe you should talk to a lawyer about pleading self-defense.

Roberts was discussing the current culture on Capitol Hill with Martha Raddatz and Anna Palmer. Roberts said that while this has been the status quo for decades, she believes that things could change now that people are coming public with their experiences.

"The fact that people are willing to be public can change things. I mean, we all talked about for years," said Roberts.

Further, Roberts says that it "does make a difference" now that women are not being shy about this kind of misconduct. Roberts implied that Conyers' predatory behavior was an open secret among the press corps.

"Don’t get in the elevator with him, you know, and the whole every female in the press corps knew that, right, don’t get in elevator with him," said Roberts. She continued, "Now people are saying it out loud. And I think that does make a difference."

Referring to an article in the NY TYimes about an american Nazi, Tony Hovater. Follow the logic:

Oddly enough, though, what is not incensing anyone is the Times making it okay to deny Obama his only actual accomplishment — being America’s first black president.

“Mr. Hovater was incensed by the media coverage of the Trayvon Martin shooting, believing the story had been distorted to make a villain of George Zimmerman, the white man who shot the black teenager,” Fausset matter-of-factly writes.

Did you see what the Times did there? In order to continue to fuel the lie that a white man killed Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, the Hispanic man who shot Martin in self-defense, is blithely referred to as “the white man who shot the black teenager.”

Here are the facts:

Yes, George Zimmerman’s father is white.

Now meet Gladys Zimmerman, George’s mother. She is a first-generation immigrant from Peru. She is Peruvian, which means she is Hispanic, which means George is Hispanic. George looks Hispanic and correctly identified himself as Hispanic when he registered to vote — as a Democrat. According to George’s brother Robert, George voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

In other words, it was not a white man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin in self-defense, it was a Hispanic, Democratic, Barack Obama supporter.

But the fiction our corrupt media continues to spread, and for obvious reasons, is that Zimmerman is white. The only problem with this fiction is that — when you lay that template over Barack Obama, born of a white mother and black father — the former president comes up white.

Richard Fausset appears to be a white man. So what you have here is a white man stripping a Hispanic man of his racial identity. “A Voice of Hate” indeed.

Now, let us try to imagine if Tony Hovater and his ilk began to matter-of-factly and incorrectly refer to Obama as white, if they began to question whether or not Obama truly deserves his place in history as America’s first black president.

What would the left’s argument be to stop them? With the imprimatur of no less than the editorial standards of the New York Times on the side of the Obama Is White Campaign, nothing could stop them. The New York Times built that.

Monday, November 27, 2017

A week after CBS host Charlie Rose was outed as an alleged serial sex harasser, one of the network’s former producers says she was told by a boss that she would have to sleep with coworkers to get anywhere in the company.

“I was in a state of shock,” said Erin Gee, 44, who worked for CBS for 17 years and recently filed a Manhattan federal suit alleging rampant sex discrimination at the network.

I'm so old, I remember when the Times ridiculed Nancy Reagan for asking an astrologer's advice.

Here’s what the feminization of the news room looks like: The New York Times — that self-appointed scourge of fake news and the alleged war on science — has published a fawning article about astrology in its news pages. “Leaning on the Stars to Make Sense of the World,” by Alexandra S. Levine, treats Times’ readers to heaping doses of astrological mumbo jumbo: “Saturn’s move from a fire sign to an earth sign next month.” It respectfully conveys astrologers’ hilariously self-important evaluations of their “profession”: “‘It’s so important that we give quality literature, quality interpretation, quality astronomy and astrology,’” says the astrology columnist for Harper’s Bazaar.

NYTimes: Ok to sexualize children for the cause of genderqueer

The article spends much of its focus on celebrating so-called gender fluidity and promotes the idea that parents who indulge, or promote, their pre-pubescent sons to become genderqueer advocates are doing A Good Thing™.

Mueller was also criticized for his time as head of the FBI. He led the investigation into the deadly anthrax attacks in the years after 9/11 for nearly seven years, ultimately leading in the prosecution of the wrong suspect, who later successfully sued the government for $5.8 million.

Didn't the "smart" people tell us Mueller was perfect and incorruptible?

An astounding performance, in which the first woman Speaker in American history goes to bat for a credibly accused harasser in the midst of a cultural revolution about stopping sexual misconduct by powerful men. She’s getting shredded for it on social media this morning too, and not just by Republicans.

Her spin is all over the map. The clip picks up after she’s called for “zero tolerance” of sexual misconduct in Congress. What about John Conyers, retorts Chuck Todd? Hey, hey, hey, says Pelosi — the man’s an icon. There are only one or two accusers. And he’s entitled to due process. Uh, he settled with his accuser, Todd reminds her, and he got to hide that settlement. Why should he get more due process after that? I’m confident Conyers will do the right thing, she tries to reassure him. And what’s the right thing, Todd presses her? Whatever’s right under the facts, Pelosi says. Do you believe the accusers, Todd finally asks her — the fateful question as “Pervnado” sweeps across America. She won’t say yes

Gosh, I sure hope we don’t come to find out that Conyers’s behavior with women staffers has been an open secret on the Hill for decades and that his friend Nancy has heard the rumors for 30 years. What a legacy that would be for her, petrified to use her authority as Democratic leader to purge the gropers in her ranks. As a Twitter pal notes, this is smoking-gun proof that the recent left-wing navel-gazing over whether Bill Clinton should have resigned 20 years ago is cynical nonsense. Faced with credible allegations against a much less powerful Democrat than Clinton in Conyers, one who’s waaaaaay past the age at which he should have retired and who’s been accused of having lost some of his mental capacity, the leader of the caucus whiffs on demanding that he step down. And worse than that, she cites his “icon” status as a point in his favor. Clinton, Conyers, and basically every male member of the Kennedy family, living or dead, would smile at that. It may be the single creepiest thing she’s ever said in public life.

Watching their least favorite Democrat shill for an accused harasser on her own side is going to convince Republicans who are on the fence about Moore that it’s not only okay for them to support him, it’s the responsible thing to do as a partisan by punishing Democratic hypocrisy. I think he just won the election.

Judge Moore needs to run this performance as the Alabama election nears to prove that Democrats don't care, never cared, about sexual harassment and their recent attempts to pretend are fake.

Friday, November 24, 2017

The TV audience for NFL games steepened its slide in Week 11, losing 1 million viewers versus last year’s season-to-date average.

The 6.3 percent slump — worsening from comparable declines of 5.6 to 5.7 percent during the previous three weeks — plagued a week whose off-the-field drama made gridiron tackling seem almost tame by comparison.

Well, if you're going to insult your audience don't be surprised if they don't come back.

As we approach the holiday season there will be much debate on how President Trump has performed for his first calendar year. As a populist president, I think the best way to judge his performance is by focusing on the issues voters say are their top priorities. Pew Research polled voters to determine their political priorities for 2017. Let’s see how President Trump is doing so far on the top ten priorities according to the public.

Just as every new generation thinks it discovered sex, refusing to wonder how they came kicking and screaming into the world, apparently the new thing is for every generation to think it discovered sexual harassment. ...

These are the major epochs in American sexual history:

1607-1968: Women in America were treated better than any place else on Earth, at any time in history.

1968-1991: Manson Family values swept the nation, with the rise of the Worst Generation. Left-wing men, from senators to hippies, treated women as subjugated beings and sexual playthings.

The Weathermen forced girls into group sex. The Supreme Court granted constitutional protection to the most vile forms of pornography. Hollywood dumped the Hays Code, and promptly went pedal-to-the-metal on movies showing the bright side of the sexual exploitation of women.

Sen. Teddy Kennedy let a girl drown at Chappaquiddick, after driving with his lights off to avoid detection on the way to a late-night extramarital liaison, and then didn't report the accident for hours, passing houses with their lights on, while he tried to construct an alibi, ending with him asking his cousin to say he was driving....

1991-the near-present: Sexual degradation of women is still taken utterly unseriously by the left, as sexual harassment is used exclusively as a political weapon against enemies of the state: conservatives, white men, athletes and Haven Monahan, the rakish UVA frat boy who didn't exist, but was still made infamous by Rolling Stone magazine.

The proof comes from two major events from the 1990s: The false sexual harassment charges against Judge Clarence Thomas in 1991 and the true sexual assault charges against President Bill Clinton in 1998. ..

Feminists lost the battle, but won the war by bothering all of us with their sexual harassment training sessions for the next few decades. Men just don't get it! Women don't lie! Believe the women! (Some women were NOT to be believed: The ones telling pollsters they believed Thomas over Hill, 2 to 1.)

After years of this sex panic, with men being sued for telling their secretaries "you look great in that," feminists finally got themselves a genuine sexual predator with President Bill Clinton.

Feminists defended the predator.

Note to Liberals: don't even try to tell us you changed your minds. You lied then and you're lying now.

Congress is still scrambling to find ways to pay for its tax cut, so perhaps it should pay closer attention to last month’s news that George Soros had transferred $18 billion of his fortune to a private charity that he controls. There it will be sheltered from the Internal Revenue Service forever. This may be the single biggest tax dodge in U.S. history, yet no one on the right or left seems to have raised an eyebrow.

True tax reform is predicated on the principle that all income should be taxed at a low rate once, and only once. But much of the wealth that Mr. Soros spent years moving into his Open Society Foundations will never be taxed. A gift of billions of dollars of appreciated stock escapes any capital gains tax, and the estate tax as well. So Mr. Soros can donate appreciated stock that Open Society Foundations can liquidate without the government ever taking a cut.

There’s more. When a person donates untaxed, appreciated assets to a private foundation, he may also deduct up to 20% of its market value on his personal return, carrying forward this deduction for five years. This double write-off may be the sweetest deal in the tax code.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

To understand the damage the storm of scandal is creating in Hollywood, the media and Washington one must go back nearly a hundred years to a time when prestige ruled the world. Whenever a small group of people rule over multitudes coercion usually becomes an impractical method of subjugation. The only alternative to physical control, as 19th century Europeans found, was bluff, or prestige as it was then called. Prestige made it possible for a few to govern numerous (and often violent) subjects.

Prestige was almost entirely psychological, based on instilling a genuine respect and admiration among the ruled. The technological advantages of Western civilization gave Europeans a head start among the teeming millions but it was never enough. Much also depended on what the British called "putting up a good show". Since empires relied on maintaining prestige, controlling Europeans who had fallen away from the 'image of the Raj as the Raj wanted to be seen' was of paramount importance. Authorities kept a close watch on vagrants or bums who ruined the brand and removed undesirables from the colonies before they could bring "the side" down.

At its best carrying the "White Man's Burden" meant strict quality control, holding Europeans to an almost impossibly high code of honor. That idea forms a large thematic part of the 1935 movie "Lives of a Bengal Lancer". The protagonists (who have manfully endured bamboo slivers pushed under their fingernails by the odious Mohamamed "we have ways to make you talk" Khan) explain how the Code works to the wavering Lieutenant Stone. It meant never showing weakness and being ready to sacrifice oneself at any time for something immeasurably greater than any individual. Torture is nothing they impress upon the young officer ...

European colonization was in some sense the longest running hit play in history. It was a performance that ended only by a humiliating eviction from the theater by the empire of Japan in 1942. When Yamashita brought the curtain down he ended the suspension of disbelief so critical for the thing to work. Though the British eventually returned victorious to Singapore in 1945 the magic was gone. Prestige had fled away. Ten years after "Lives of a Bengal Lancer" the bugles had ceased to blow.

In the unending exposes of financial, moral and sexual turpitude we are witnessing a similar humiliation of a ruling elite. The critical role played by prestige in upholding the current status quo was no less important for the Western elite than it was for the old District Commissioners. Not so very long ago the elites were accepted as woke, part of the mission civilisatrice; better educated, better looking, better dressed, destined to greater things, the smartest people in the room. They could pronounce on matters of morality, politics and even the climate. What a shock it was to find through the Internet and social media it was all a sham; and these gods of Washington and Hollywood and the media were deeply flawed and despicable people.

Given the lack of quality control and penchant for recruiting rather than expelling the scandalous it's amazing in retrospect the prestige lasted so long. All the same, now their fallibility has been exposed under the spotlight of technological innovation, the spell is broken. The elites may still rule but the sullen masses no longer flock to their door as they did of old. Perhaps the single most destabilizing political development since the WW2 has been the destruction of ruling class prestige by the Internet.

Today the audience has turned away disgusted and the actual property of prestige is under threat. In the post-Twitter world it seems difficult to inhabit the haunted palace of celebrity ever again. Not only is it ludicrous to conceive of the places formerly occupied by fallen idols being reoccupied by Donald Trump and Steve Bannon or imagine Breitbart, Red State or PJMedia usurping the sacred precincts once reserved for the NYT or the Washington Post but brute fact is they can't. With every part of the palace including the toilet now covered by CCTV cameras, Internet and social media, no one can be larger than life again.

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Up to 95 per cent of plastic polluting the world's oceans pours in from just ten rivers, according to new research.

The top 10 rivers - eight of which are in Asia - accounted for so much plastic because of the mismanagement of waste.

About five trillion pounds is floating in the sea, and targeting the major sources - such as the Yangtze and the Ganges - could almost halve it, scientists claim.

While China is responsible for 2.4 million tons of plastic that makes its way into the ocean, nearly 28 percent of the world total, the United States contributes just 77,000 tons, which is less than one percent, according to the study published in the journal Science.

Something tells me that Democrats wish they had not brought up the issue of sexual harassment. This was supposed to have taken Trump out of the race. Instead it has boomeranged in the biggest way.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not “succumb to [his] sexual advances.”

Monday, November 20, 2017

The Democrats spent decades telling women how Republicans hate them and now, well, it appears the Democrats like women, just the wrong way, and they like obtaining consent not at all. Pervgate is generating gross revelation after gross revelation, and basically America’s ladies are being asked, “Show me on the doll where the bad party touched you.”

The “faux-serious report” gap

Sarah Hoyt has some thoughts.

When I was looking for this report, which I vaguely remembered reading about while I was deep in the throes of finishing a novel, a friend of mine referred to it as “World to End Tomorrow: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit.”

He is not wrong....

I look forward to a world in which everyone is wealthy enough that men and women can work at whatever they want. And if what they want is to stay at home and raise their kids, or try to develop a business in wool dying, painting or writing, I hope they get to do it, while telling the busybodies of the Gender Gap Report to take a long hike off a short pier.

If there’s one gap we liberty lovers should be concerned about, it’s the “faux-serious report” gap, in which the left has a commanding and intimidating lead.

Until we close up that gap, though, we can do our best in showing how silly their reports are, how shallow their notions of equality, and how pathetic their ability to reason.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

The process began in May 2013, in a ruling against St. Joseph’s University, and has lately accelerated (15 rulings in 2016 and 21 thus far in 2017). Of the 40 setbacks for colleges in federal court, 14 came from judges nominated by Barack Obama, 11 from Clinton nominees, and nine from selections of George W. Bush. Brown University has been on the losing side of three decisions; Duke, Cornell, and Penn State, two each.

But not fast enough. Why does a student need to go to court to get a university to treat him fairly?

Last weekend in Beijing, as part of his 12-day trip to Asia, President Trump announced that the US and China had signed an $83.7 billion memorandum of understanding to create a number of petrochemical projects in West Virginia over the next 20 years.

If the agreement holds tight, it is an economic game changer for the state.

And yet, speaking to the locals here, you wouldn’t even know it had happened.

“I am surprised I heard nothing about it on the national news, nor in my local paper and newscasts,” said Jerald Stephens, 67, a West Virginia native and union rep, who has been a keen observer of local politics for as long as he can remember.

President Trump’s approval ratings, often mocked by Democrats and the media, top those of Europe’s biggest three leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Britain’s Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron.

America is now confronting its endemic sexual harassment problem and finally holding powerful men accountable for their crimes against women in an unprecedented way. Big-name celebrities and media titans are being outed as the sex criminals they truly are, but infuriatingly, exposed serial abusers like Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK continue to issue public apologies that fail to convey sincere remorse and attempt to justify their heinous behavior. These weak, mealy-mouthed mea culpas cannot be tolerated, and as a male feminist and ally to women, I believe that I would totally crush it if I ever had to publicly apologize for sexual misconduct.

Seriously. It would be an absolute slam dunk.

First off, I would immediately admit to the charges leveled against me. Whatever I was accused of doing, whether it was lewd comments, groping, public masturbation, coercing female employees into sex for promotions, or something even worse, I would own up to it because, as a progressive, I do not want to contribute to a culture that discredits women for speaking up. I read enough feminist think-pieces to know that it’s important to believe women, and in my apology, there wouldn’t be any half-assed claims about misconstruing signals or consent, no fucking way. I would own that shit.

Also, I wouldn’t wait until a Cosby-sized crowd of victims stepped forward .....

I have called Trump a Populist in other essays, like this one, becaue I didn't associate poplism with evil. I may have been wrong. Here's an intersting - and valid - take by F. H. Buckley (no relation to William F. Buckley - or Natioanl Review, thank God).

You should never let your opponents define you, because they’re not looking to do you any favors. That’s why Republicans, especially those who voted for President Trump, should object to being called populists.

Populism was one of the nastiest of American political movements. It was inevitable, therefore, that Trump would be called a populist. But that doesn’t describe Trump, or the Republican Party he re-invented.

It’s true that, like most populists, Trump thinks that tariff walls that keep foreign goods out of the country might help American workers. But then Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley thought so, too, and they weren’t populists.

It’s also true that, like most populists, Trump championed an underclass unjustly held back by an aristocracy of wealth. But then Karl Marx and socialist Eugene V. Debs thought the same thing, and they weren’t populists. And like most populists, Trump decried the influence of money in politics. But then so did Hillary Clinton and Liz Warren, and nobody called them populists.

Here’s what the accusation of populism really means. It’s a smear meant to link one to people like “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, one of the vilest characters in American political history. Tillman was the governor of South Carolina from 1890 to 1894 and served as the state’s representative in the US Senate for the next 23 years. He invented Jim Crow laws in his state, defended lynch mobs and boasted of the African-Americans he had killed.

Trump is something new in American politics. He’s not Andrew Jackson, or a plain-speaking Harry Truman. He’s not Ronald Reagan. He’s unlike anything we’ve seen before, for the simple reason that he’s up against something we’ve never seen before: a left that’s given up on the American dream of a mobile and classless society, that defends economic immobility and aristocracy.

Trump isn’t a populist. He’s a conservative nationalist. As a conservative he favors socially conservative institutions and free-market solutions to political questions. As a nationalist he is middle of the road or liberal when it comes to taking care of Americans who have fallen behind, through a generous safety net.

That might sound like an unnatural union of opposites, but similar parties have had a long history in our sister parliamentary governments. Benjamin Disraeli was another conservative nationalist. As a parliamentarian, he opposed Sir Robert Peel’s free-trade policies and in the process created a new Tory party.

And a year before Friedrich Engels shocked readers with his description of the wretchedness of East End London in “The Condition of the Working Class in England” (1845), Disraeli had written no less passionately about economic inequality.

Then, as the Conservative prime minister, Disraeli extended the franchise to all adult male heads of households in the 1867 Reform Bill.

In a speech on the bill, Disraeli described what he thought the Tory Party should be, in terms that also define Trump’s Republican Worker’s Party:

“I have always considered that the Tory party was the national party of England . . . It is formed of all classes, from the highest to the most homely, and it upholds a series of institutions that are in theory, and ought to be in practice, an embodiment of the national requirements and the security of the national rights.”

As a nationalist, Disraeli and his party wanted all Britons to prosper. He could never have called one group of his countrymen deplorable, or ignored half the voters because they were in the wrong identity group.

By reaching out to all Britons, he took the Whig’s issues away from them, just as Trump did in dishing the Democrats.

Not much has changed, and the American who wishes to understand the shape of things to come might do well to read up on the “Tory Democracy” of Lord Randolph Churchill (Winston’s father) or observe the similarities between Trump’s agenda and the National Policy of Sir John A. Macdonald’s Tory Party in Canada.

They were conservative, but because they supported generous social-welfare policies they were sometimes called Red Tories. And they’re the ancestors of Trump’s Republican Party.

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Jonah Goldberg's Above It All

National Review has been one of the leaders of the #NeverTrump movement and Jonah Goldberg is a senior editor. That is a perfect place from which to position himself above the fray. Goldberg and NR hate the Trumpian populism with a burning hatred that far exceeds their dislike of the Left.

During the 2016 election they preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. Their hate of Trump and what he represents transfers to anyone who is on the same side of the cultural spectrum as Trump.

Which bring us to Roy Moore, Republican candidate for Senate from Alabama.

In this article he casts big stones at Judge Roy Moore who has been hit with a flurry of just-before-the-election sexual accusations.

Right-wingers tell me that Al Franken must resign for behavior far less offensive than what Roy Moore has been accused of.

See what he did there? Equating an unproven accusation with a fact that has been memorialized with pictures.

Where there's an opportunity to stop another Trumpian figure an accusation = a fact.

Goldberg deplores hypocrisy, and in an ideal world hypocrisy is to not a virtue, although I am reminded of the old saying that “hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” Hypocrisy is a human failing. What I find even worse is that in so much of modern society virtue is no longer honored and vice is no longer condemned. Where vice is normal, hypocrisy can't exist.

The problem with Jonah’s argument is not that it’s not abstractly worthwhile but it’s vacuous. In years past, when NR was Bill Buckley’s magazine, Jonah wrote for the Conservative Republican audience. Now that he’s a full fledged member of the #NeverTrumpers his writing is meant for a very small coterie and, except for some ankle-biting of Trump and his supporters, his writing has absolutely no effect on the culture.

It’s a form of onanism. He’s writing for a fringe of a fringe. That doesn’t make him a public intellectual; it makes him a jerk. Someone who pretends to be something he’s not. He’s not on the field where the game is being played; instead he’s wandering the sidelines jumping up and down hoping for attention.

Jonah's an entertaining writer, but opinion writers should be held to different standards than novelists. The novelist only needs to entertain to be successful. Opinion writers should have somewhat loftier goals. Advancing their ideas, for one.

Let’s check the scoreboard.

Didn’t National review call for the end of the Clinton Presidency during Whitewater and the Lewinski affair? Yes. And what happened? Bill Clinton won two terms. "We’ll just have to win" said perjurer/rapist/sleazebag Clinton. And he did.

Did National Review inveigh against the Obama presidency? It most definitely did, and what happened? He won two terms. And, I might add, changed America … as he promised; not for the better but for the worse. Not in the direction of National Review or the conservative direction, but in the direction of The Nation. The country became the country of "Hands up don't shoot" and Black Lives Matter. It honored Harvey Weinstein. It became the country of Big Lies like the UVA Non-Rape and the Duke Lacrosse non-Rape Case.

But, but, but ....That’s not fair, cries NR and the #NeverTrumpers. You can’t expect an opinion magazine and a few articles in the Wall Street Journal to effect an election. It’s the rest of the press and the Democrats who are to blame.

Can we be honest? The people who were the intellectual Generals of the Right were as effective as the Washington Generals, the patsies for the Harlem Globetrotters. The Washington Generals lost to the Harlem Globetrotters over 16,000 times. They were there to make the Globetrotters look good. And that's the role that Goldberg, and the others leaders of the "Respectable Right" were assigned. And they played their role to perfection.

So here we are. But in the meantime a strange, totally unexpected, intruder has entered Washington. Despite unified opposition from Democrats, the Press (but I repeat myself) and the Establishment Right, we have a Republican President and he has a nominally Republican Congress.

And at this juncture, when the economy is picking up, the stock market is reaching all-time highs, regulations are being repealed, energy production is booming, unemployment is at record lows, Jonah Goldberg calls us to commit political suicide. To repeat the totally ineffective, ineffectual plays that were called before. As the Democrats are circling the wagons around Al “Fish Lips” Franken, Goldberg demands that Republicans lose the Senate seat in Alabama. Bill Buckley once said that the Constitution is not a suicide pact, but Jonah Goldberg doesn't believe it. It’s said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Jonah Goldberg's not insane. He's comfortable. The old Conservative objectives of limited government and rescuing America from decline is not his objective. His eyes are closer to home.

He’s doing fine. He’s got a job at NR, a syndicated column; he’s on Fox News from time to time as one of the designated “conservatives.” He writes books, he’s happy, particularly content with the audience he’s got and the paycheck he receives. Jonah Goldberg is a business, a persona, an actor playing a role, just like many of the people who are doing well in the Swamp. In reality he’s a guy with a pretty good career and he isn’t about to blow it. That’s what pays the groceries and keeps a roof over his head. He's not that much different from the sales rep who’s meeting his quota. And he has just as much influence on the culture and the direction of American politics.

Which is interesting. Because the current President – Donald Trump – is a gifted amateur. And he’s doing a great job changing the culture, changing Washington, making America Great Again despite having to fight this particular fight virtually alone. That’s why it’s time to roll right over the professionals – the Generals who have lost the last wars; every damn one of them. It's time to go with a new team – and go with amateurs who will, at the least, fight. Because the fight means something to someone who still cares.

Bill Whittel on the Gods of the Copybook Headings

A panel featuring Gloria Borger asserts this was no big deal, because he was a comedian, and as we know from Louis CK, comedians have special license to jerk off in front of women and/or grope them as they sleep.
And also jam their tongues in their mouths after being specifically told they don't even want to do a fake stage kiss-- something the leftist media keeps "forgetting" to note.

Ace of Spades

It's good to see that, not 72 hours of their Bravery in admitting maybe they covered up and spun for Bill Clinton's sex assaults and rape too much, they're right back to providing the same service for another lesser Democrat.

The "respectable" class attacks the lunacy of Alex Jones' nightmare scenarios about the top 5% of the world population wanting to exterminate the bottom 95%, but when leftists actually endorse a similar plan (actually pushing for Voluntary Human Self-Extinction), the "respectable" class pretends this is a reputable idea worth serious consideration.

That accident at Chappaquiddick Bridge

Just an internet rumor?

I question that Teddy Kennedy ‘allowed’ Mary Jo to die. The turnoff is quite abrupt and the suspicion in my mind is that it may have been deliberate. As in: “Teddy, what would you do if I told you I was pregnant?” Teddy: “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

I’d been in the United States Peace Corps for all of 48 hours when I received my first bag of taxpayer-funded condoms.

In the Peace Corps, they don’t waste time with foreplay. This was in 2002, when I was stationed at a health sanatorium north of Tashkent, one of 50 Volunteers in training. After dinner on our second day, we were ordered to report to the clinic for the first of several rounds of vaccinations. First came the needles and then came the candy, but along with the sweets I was given a brown paper bag.

I looked. “Oh, thanks,” I said, “but I don’t need this.” I handed it back. “You should take them,” the nurse assured me. “Just in case.” I blinked.

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I set the bag on the table and left the room. “I’ll omit the slap this time,” I thought. “But consider yourself lucky.”

...

Over my two years in the Peace Corps, I would get many more openings for that cinematic slap. It’s the only place I’ve ever worked where one steps up to a conference check-in desk expecting to receive a room key, welcome folder, and bag of condoms. There was, to be sure, a method to this madness. For the most part, the Peace Corps was a magnet for educated, unwed twenty-somethings with broadly left-leaning views. Our Washingtonian handlers wanted us to spread goodwill abroad, but in an Islamic society, a recent-college-graduate approach to the bodily appetites was likelier to spread resentment and venereal disease. Thus, an implicit compromise was struck. We were not technically forbidden to have sex with locals, but we were urged to be “culturally sensitive” at our assigned work sites.

Then, periodically, we were summoned to conferences at health sanatoriums deep in the mountains, where we were issued condoms and left largely to ourselves for a couple of days. Some Volunteers started referring to these scheduled get-togethers as “shore leave.” “Shore leave” was more or less what one would expect. The scheduled sessions mostly seemed like an inconsequential appendage to the (ahem) night life. Ironically, in establishments meant to restore health, the air seemed to be permeated by this raw, unmediated collision of appetite and loneliness. Both were intense.

The carousel of beds, bodies, and beer bottles precipitated a different kind of culture shock for a young religious conservative. I didn’t find it liberating; I found it foul. Even so, the chastity soapbox looks monstrously unappealing when you’re 22, a freakish ideological outlier, and 12,000 miles from home.

I settled into a pragmatic routine. Following my ritual refusal of the condoms, I would open a Peace Corps conference by quietly looking for a roommate agreeable to a no-sex-actually-in-the-room rule. (I wasn’t terrified of being raped, but I do prefer to have a wall between myself and the closest copulating couple.)

Books and solitary walks infused some sanity into the next few days, and I completed my term of service in 2004 without ever availing myself of the free condoms, free therapy, or free trip to Planned Parenthood. (Under George W. Bush’s administration, the Peace Corps couldn’t pick up that particular bill, but we were promised that we would be delivered directly to the doorstep should relevant circumstances arise.) I won’t betray personal secrets, except to say: Some fared worse.

Now that Bill Clinton and his trashy wife are politically impotent, Democrats want a do over on Paula Jones -- you know the state employee Governor Bill Clinton tried to force to fellate him.

She sued. His lawyers deposed him. He perjured himself (and tried to suborn perjury from others) about his consensual affair with That Woman, Miss Lewinsky.

Perjury and suborning perjury can be felonies, and certainly are impeachable offenses. Democrats played it as everyone lies about sex, and he beat the rap.

Sex is private, right?

Now, all of Washington wants to strip Alabama of the right to elect Roy Moore, and Democrats find themselves on the outside looking in.

So now there are a bunch of articles about how, oh, I believe Juanita Broaddrick (who claims Clinton raped her).

That's nice.

It is irrelevant.

Clinton is irrelevant, and Broaddrick's story is hearsay. Sorry. Absent a conviction or admission of guilt, it is just gossip.

But things may have been better had people believed her when we still could have had a police investigation, indictment, and trial. You know, all the things that make us civilized instead of the boys in "Lord of the Flies."

Besides, it wasn't just Clinton.

It was Ted Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Democrats -- and frankly, most Republicans -- were cool with keeping Kennedy in the Senate after he got drunk, ditched his car in the water, and left a woman to die.

And 22 years later, Democrats wanted to deny Thomas a seat on the Supreme Court because a woman said he put a hair on a can of Coca-Cola.

I say to heck with them.

I advise my friends and relatives in Alabama to vote for Roy Moore. He can always be expelled if he's guilty. We cannot expel Doug Jones if Moore is cleared.

Want to know one very, very big reason why Washington DC needs to be removed from our lives? Because it attracts the most horrible people.

Consider Joe Biden. A few short weeks ago, the former senator and vice president seemed like he would be a leading contender to win the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 and then the favorite to challenge President Trump's bid for re-election. But now? Biden's polling may look good, but he has a history of wandering hands that is simply incompatible with the new normal. He's a political dead man.

Now think of all the pages and interns and young staffers cycling through all of those offices on Capitol Hill, year after year, decade after decade. And the countless thousands of staffers who've passed through the White House and executive branch departments and agencies across Democratic and Republican administrations. And all the Supreme Court clerks and assistants. How long until one of these pages or interns or staffers or clerks or assistants, or dozens of them, or hundreds of them, begin to talk and make credible accusations against leading public figures of both parties?

How many unwanted advances, kisses, gropes, coerced sex acts, and other forms of harassment, abuse, and assault are we likely to learn about?

I suspect far more than any of us can imagine.

Already we know that the House has paid out $15 million over the last 10-15 years to settle sexual harassment allegations. And that is surely just the beginning.

The reckoning is coming. Washington is going to weather an absolute hurricane of sexual abuse allegations and revelations.

As NPR's Board of Directors meet in Washington, D.C., this week, the network finds itself confronted by a series of dispiriting developments: a CEO on medical leave; a chief news executive forced out over sexual harassment allegations; the sudden resignation of a board chairman; fresh complaints over inappropriate behavior by colleagues; and a network roiled by tensions over the treatment of its female workers.

What's the difference between Moore and Franken?

There's a photo of Franken in the act.

From USA Today.

It's also possible that the photo of Franken on the airplane made a difference in the case here. Despite the wave of accusations against Moore, none have photographic evidence other than a signed high school yearbook that Moore claims is phony.

The way some of these people defend gender reveal parties, they talk like it’s a centuries long tradition and not something made up in the last decade in reaction against gay + trans people gaining positive social visibility

Tumblr Feminist 2:

it’s absurd how quickly it’s been normalized!

Ask yourself, what gave rise to “gender reveal parties”?

Answer: Prenatal ultrasound, which since the 1980s has become a routine method of determining the sex (not “gender”) of children (not “fetuses”) before they are born. It was impossible to have a “gender reveal” party prior to the widespread use of ultrasound technology, because parents didn’t know whether it was a boy or a girl until it was born.

Where do these Tumblr feminists get the idea that “gender reveal parties” were “made up . . . in reaction against” LGBT “social visibility”? What kind of warped self-referential paranoia does this express?

From the comments:

You know what's been absurdly normalized so quickly?LGBT privileges.

and

❝I think the real issue is Those Who Want To Be Noticed. That's probably an oversimplification, but at this point I am going to accept it as a working assumption.

It's not that they believe, it's that they need the perception of others to validate their belief.❞

Thursday, November 16, 2017

The New York Times keeps whitewashing communism’s crimes

The Trump administration marked this week’s 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution by declaring a National Day for the Victims of Communism. The New York Times marked the same anniversary in a different way: by running a series of articles extolling the virtues of communism.

The irony of the series’ title, “Red Century,” seems lost on the Times’s editors. The 20th century was “red” indeed — red with the blood of communism’s victims. The death toll of communism, cited in “The Black Book of Communism,” is simply staggering: In the USSR, nearly 20 million dead; China, 65 million; Vietnam, 1 million; Cambodia, 2 million; Eastern Europe, 1 million; Africa, 1.7 million; Afghanistan, 1.5 million; North Korea: 2 million (and counting). In all, Communist regimes killed some 100 million people — roughly four times the number killed by the Nazis — making communism the most murderous ideology in human history.

Never mind all that. University of Pennsylvania professor Kristen R. Ghodsee writes that Communists had better sex: “Eastern women had twice as many orgasms as Western women . . . [who] had less sex, and less satisfying sex, than women who had to line up for toilet paper.” She has tough words for Joseph Stalin because he “reversed much of the Soviet Union’s early progress in women’s rights — outlawing abortion and promoting the nuclear family.” Yes, that was Stalin’s crime. Not the purges, not the gulag, but promoting the nuclear family.

...

The Times’s series is in the tradition set by former Times Moscow bureau chief Walter Duranty, who wrote glowing reports on Stalin’s rule that included repeated denials of the mass starvation from Stalin’s engineered famine in Ukraine. “Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda,” he wrote, while millions starved to death. And besides, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

Now, after a century of slaughter, the Times is back at it, portraying communism as a noble cause, the murders carried out in its name simply aberrations. Never mind that there is not a single example of a country where communism was tried and it did not result in terror, purges, massacres, starvation and totalitarian misery. Yet take any of the opinion pieces above and replace the word “Communist” with “Nazi,” and then try to imagine that anyone would publish them, other than perhaps the Daily Stormer.